Today Lexis Nexis is releasing a new M&A analytics tool called Market Standards which helps lawyers identify, compare and analyze publicly files transactions – to optimize the terms of M&A deals.

Market Standards enables a lawyer to analyze, 150+ deal points, in 33,000 deals spanning 10 years. New deals are analyzed and added within 48 hours. Using detailed deal points lawyers can easily find precedent language, and see deal point and transactional trends with data visualizations.

Market Standards was developed with feedback from “hundreds of interactions with M&A lawyers.” Market Standards enables attorneys to:

  • Compare deals side-by-side and access full-document views of all filings related to a deal and key acquisition agreements
  • Gain data-driven insights into market trends on the most negotiated contract provisions and drill down with detailed filters for even more specific information
  • Analyze market trends with interactive, “big picture” data visualizations that immediately update as deal point filters are added or deleted
  • Easily find precedent for your transaction, filtering down to granular levels such as earn-out metrics, escrow types, indemnification caps and baskets, and reverse termination fee triggers
  • Discover terms that counsel has agreed to across the table, or the fee amounts a financial advisor was paid in past transactions

Market Standards will be incorporated into Practical Guidance, and future expansions into other practice areas are planned. Customers subscribe to Practical Guidance for M&A  will receive access to M&A Market Standards at no additional cost. Additional Market Standard modules are planned for  Employment and Finance in 2021.

Lexis provided insights into the product development in the press release:

“Understanding current standards and trends for M&A deal points and easily accessing highly relevant language gives attorneys an edge when drafting and negotiating. Market Standards is a uniquely powerful tool for M&A attorneys,” said Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO, LexisNexis North America. “Market Standards provides the detail and analytics that M&A attorneys and research professionals need to make the most informed decisions.”

“We believe the future of practical guidance is data-driven. We’ve started with M&A and will be expanding Market Standards to other practice areas in the coming months,” said Daniel Lewis, Vice President of Practical Guidance. “We’ll also be launching a number of new, exclusive features that advance data-driven practical guidance.”

The Market for Market Standards

Legal analytics has been a very hot market. Transactional lawyers have felt neglected as litigation analytics exploded into the market and have become a  routine part of  of litigation  strategy and pitches. Other products which preceded Market Standards to the market include Bloomberg Law’s Transactional Intelligence Center and Wolters Kluwer M&A Clause Analytics.

Market Standards is an impressive product but I am somewhat baffled. LexisNexis already owns the dominant SEC research product Intelligize, which also provide analytics of M&A deals.  Lexis has developed a  KM product Lexis Search Advantage which is built on Intelligize search algorithms and tagging. It may be concerning for Intelligize customers that the launch of Market Standards may shift investment away from Intelligize.